Patients' lived experiences of breathlessness prior to prehospital care - A phenomenological study.
Wivica Kauppi, Christer Axelsson, Johan Herlitz and 2 others
PMID 35606842WHAT IT FOUND
Patients with breathlessness described fear of dying and waiting until control was lost before calling.
They feared burdening ambulance staff, so delay may not mean mild symptoms.
Key findings
01Breathlessness was described as moving from physical difficulty breathing to anxiety and panic, then to existential fear of dying.
02Patients often tried to handle breathlessness alone and delayed calling because they did not want to burden ambulance staff or be ashamed if it was not serious.
03They called only when they felt the body was beyond control and life threatened.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Fourteen patients were studied, and most were women, so the themes may not capture all patients with breathlessness. The study was done in Sweden with ambulance care organised around registered nurses and emergency dispatch, so other health systems may differ. Interviews happened between 1 week and 2 years after the event, so recall may have shaped the descriptions. Twelve interviews were by telephone, which may have limited what participants could convey. One interview was interrupted because the participant's health deteriorated, so that account may be incomplete. The study describes experiences, not the effect of any assessment, communication, or treatment approach.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these findings as evidence that a specific communication approach improves breathlessness outcomes. They describe patients' experiences and reasons for delay in one small qualitative study, not tested effects.